BYU football players a small part of a large effort

Wednesday night, a cadre of BYU football players shed the cloud of a 1-4 season and stepped into a world of giving in an Orem subdivision, where construction workers and other volunteers are donating skills to a grateful family in need.

It's a five-day blitz.

These BYU players, led by guard Jason Speredon, were at the home of Mike and Mindy Gleason, where throughout the week about 200 volunteers gathered to rebuild a house, a $60,000 charitable project by Heart 2 Home. It's a project that would ordinarily take two months but will be finished by Saturday, weather permitting.

The Gleason home needed this work — ripping off the back of the house and adding a bedroom, family/therapy room and bathroom — to aid in the care of tiny 2-year old Presley Gleason, who contracted RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) last winter.

This ailment has forced Presley to breathe through a tracheotomy tube and receive her food through a direct line into her stomach. She can't recover from a cough without special equipment and her vocal chords and diaphragm are paralyzed. Little Presley was just diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy with Respiratory Distress. Her challenges are irreversible and the work on the split level home is to save her from having to be transported up and down stairs.

"She'll be trach-vented for the rest of her life," said Mindy, 26. "They don't know a lot about the disease but she is doing well for what she has. Many are trach-vented as infants but she wasn't until age two. She will be in a wheelchair and hooked up to machines all her life but she is happy and very smart."

Mindy's husband Mike, 27, is a fulltime student and works as a draftsman. Mike and Mindy have a nurse tend to Presley during the night, as they sleep, to monitor her equipment and suction off her respirator as she feeds. Mindy takes over at 8 every morning.

"It's a lot of work, but she's worth it. She's a sweet girlie little thing," said Mindy.

Sandy's Dave Bailey of Bell Canyon Concrete Construction Company is an artist with concrete, and he's donated all the flatwork and use of his three-man crew to the Gleason home this week.

I asked Bailey, who found out about the project Sunday, why he got involved. He explained the weather shut down his regular projects. "And we knew they were in kind of a bind."

Then Bailey paused, a long pause. He fought to get out the words. "We've just been extremely blessed. We have a lot of work in these tough times.

"It's time to give back."